SAMHSA also looked at Americans’ marijuana use and found that numbers using pot in the past month were up for the two years covered by the report: 6.4 percent of Americans aged 12 and older said they had used marijuana in the past month compared to six percent in 2007-2008.

In the 12- to 17-year age group, marijuana use fell, but seven percent of US teens still use cannabis, the report said.
The 10 states that saw the highest use of marijuana were Alaska, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Medical marijuana is legal in all of those states except for Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Perceptions of the dangers associated with marijuana use were lowest in the 10 states where the drug was used the most, according to the study.

Drug Warriors love to shout in booming voices that if we legalized marijuana, stoners would begin coming out of the woodwork and cause an epidemic of bong-rips and bloodshot eyes. Scientists completely disagree, and say that marijuana law reform does not lead to an increase in usage.

In fact, they say just the opposite. Evidence from countries like Portugal and the Netherlands shows that liberalizing drug laws actually leads to a decrease in usage. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Drug Warriors.

Don’t believe me? Listen to The Young Turks:

Jeremiah Vandermeer is editor of Cannabis Culture. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

With recreational marijuana becoming available for sale on New Year’s Day, you may be asking...

Comments

10 Comments

Let's sue, already! on
August 21, 2011 12:55 am

from Granny Storm Crow’s (updated) List:

“Every cell in your body has tiny chemical receptors all over the cell’s “skin” or cell membrane. These receptors work kind of like an ignition switch- you put the right type of chemical “key” into a receptor and it “turns on” some kind of action. The type 1 cannabinoid receptors (CB1s) are the ones we are interested in looking at. They are found both in the body and the brain.

“Turning on” a CB1 receptor with either an endocannabinoid that your body makes, or a phytocannabinoid like THC, can result in many different things occurring. A cancer cell may be “told” to die through a process called apoptosis, it may activate a basic instinct such as nursing, soothe an irritated digestive tract, or simply ease your pain. The CB1 receptors in your brain are the ones to blame, or praise, for the cannabis “high”.

Every time a cell divides, whether it is a brain cell, or a body cell, it needs to make new “skin” to grow back to its full size, and that involves making a whole bunch of new receptors.

And this is where the cutting-edge science starts– to make functional CB1 receptors, you absolutely need Omega-3! In “Nutritional omega-3 deficiency abolishes endocannabinoid-mediated neuronal functions”, the Omega-6-rich “western diet” is implicated in our declining mental and physical health. The “ideal” proportion of Omega-6 to Omega-3 is around 3 to 4 parts Omega-6 to every 1 part Omega-3. Our “western diet” can deliver up to a 50 to 1 ratio!

When no Omega-3 is available, our bodies will “jury-rig” a new receptor with an Omega-6 where there should be an Omega-3. This results in a small, but important chunk, the Gi/o effector protein, not getting attached. As with a machine, the pieces need to be assembled right to work!

A drop in the number of working CB1 receptors is an early clinical sign in Parkinson’s, colon cancer, Huntington’s, and heralds a high risk for premature birth. Mice bred to be low in CB1 receptors have more severe heart attacks and strokes. Cancers ravage them. They age and become senile earlier than normal mice. They are used to study neurological conditions and bowel disorders. They often seem depressed. They sound a lot like many modern Americans.

The three most common sources of Omega-3 are fish oil, flax seed oil and hemp seed oil.

Cannabis is an effective and safe herbal medicine, but we need functioning CB1 receptors for it to work its miracles. Virtually every person needs more Omega-3 in their diet, but none as much as the medical users of cannabis! Cannabis heals us using our cannabinoid receptors, and also provides the Omega-3 that we need to make healthy CB receptors, so we can heal. And that is the simple, but scientific truth.

Check it out for yourself and tell EVERYONE! MattSnyderForPresident.com

Anonymous on
August 4, 2011 12:59 am

to be clear, making pot legal would be extremely ethical/good & thus it should happen… it’s just that ‘do it to decrease use’ argument which is perverted but potentially useful (in a ‘useful idiot’ sense, minus the communist implication).

Anonymous on
August 4, 2011 12:57 am

Making pot legal in order to decrease use is a bad idea because pot should actually be used more: it is, according to Robert Melamede who makes a very convincing case from an evidence-based ethical perspective, part of a healthy lifestyle… a supplement necessary for an optimally fulfilled/healthy life.

Clearly, progress requires compromise & political saavy, so advertising the statistics could do some good.

The fact of decreased use in these nations with a more progressive outlook is maybe a useful fact for gradual moral progress… sort of like telling white slave-owners that getting rid of slavery will result in them being further away from black people; it’s not a good fact, but could be useful in trying to end the enslavement of black people. We are actually dealing with a real slave issue here: those punished for cannabis are regularly enslaved, and at least abused.

Anonymous on
August 3, 2011 11:43 pm

Legalizing all “harmful substances” has shown around the world that the number of users and abusers is not significantly affected.